The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism

@reirdon
Just watch the last few vids they released...they couldnt even keep the servers running corectly. The optimism in the videos is clearly showing. They even pushed off microtransactions to push more content first. No where in any article or video have i seen anything that the game is failing or dying. Or even that its on a decline.

@gloog said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@verminpup said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

Sounds to me like just want to play literally any of the other multiplayer games on the market. Let me guess, you took philosophy in university? ;)

Rofl, I was going to mention this. Came off as elitist freshman philo talk... my buddy did say he finished exam week recently.

If you have a buddy that just finished exams, then I am probably old enough to be your father, so no, I am not some 19 year old who just took my first class in Jung and thinks he is the first person to figure out the meaning of existence.

I like to debate. I like to discuss. I like to hear my ideas challenged.

"Fancy book lurnin and all"

@drakebg757
He made a case but missed the point of the game entirely. There are no losses here. Its a cartoony pirate game where we are all supposed to have a little fun for once. Nothing to gain but friends and nothing to lose but time. Everyones equal. Its your own adventure to make mate.

@nwo-azcrack said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@reirdon
Just watch the last few vids they released...they couldnt even keep the servers running corectly. The optimism in the videos is clearly showing. They even pushed off microtransactions to push more content first. No where in any article or video have i seen anything that the game is failing or dying. Or even that its on a decline.

I have watched them. There are many ways to see them though.

They had a plan on what they wanted to do, they scrubbed that entire plan to adjust to player input.

While that shows responsiveness, and commitment, it also shows that the plan they had was a million miles from what they thought they should do. They believed that players would be thrilled enough to jump right into paying for pets, they put off a monetizing content piece in response to player comments. Canceling an element that makes money is not something you do if things are going well.

"Sea of Thieves revenue was lower than expected this quarter because were not able to introduce micro transactions when we had planned, because things "were going to well".

You see optimism, but I see stressed body language.

The game has been out for a month. You haven't heard anything about it failing because there is no data yet. I am not saying that it will fail, but with a four year dev cycle, it will take more than even great day one sales for this to be a financial winner.

My real point is the contradictions on the forums.

Tons of posts complaining that it is a ruthless bloodbath.
Tons of posts complaining that there is nothing to do.

They did not include progression in the interest of equality, and in the absence of something to do, aggressive players kill anything that moves.

That is not my opinion, that is a condensed version of opinions voiced here in the forums.

And they do it with the same gear everyone else has, so equality did not cure the issue it was meant to solve.

@varples said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

Firstly urgh politics. Please don't do that here.

Secondly, a level playing field makes for a good pvp game. No ultra advantages sitting behind a timesink or money barrier make for skill & tactic based gameplay. Thats not socialism...

This is a game. Its main hook is not locking content (beyond skins) behind a timesink or paywall.. its main hook is voyaging adventure and fun. I think people are so conditioned to expect to gain advantage for spending time that Sea of Thieves throws them. Like CS:S or PUBG, the gameplay is the thing.

As for gamepass vs purchase, the purchase was essentially a years subscription paid up front for a 50% discount of 12 months expansions.

This is a horrible PvP game and there is no level playing field. Is M/Kb vs Controller a level playing field? No. Is 4 guys in a galleon vs 1 guy in a sloop a level playing field? No. The game is so fundamentally imbalanced and unfair that calling it, "PvP" is an insult to real PvP games like Overwatch. This is not a PvP game. It is a griefing game. The objective is not competition, but trolling.

@reirdon
Well if you are comming to this conclusion from reading the forums then the outlook should be better for you. I heard the forums have not even 10% of the players posting in it.

@nwo-azcrack said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@drakebg757
He made a case but missed the point of the game entirely. There are no losses here. Its a cartoony pirate game where we are all supposed to have a little fun for once. Nothing to gain but friends and nothing to lose but time. Everyones equal. Its your own adventure to make mate.

I didn't miss the point. I specifically recognized the point first thing. Some people like to just play and explore and joke etc, and some people want to kill everything that moves just for the sake of doing so.

My point is not that casual play is bad, but more that they have created a situation where casual players and aggressive players are colliding.

The capitalism and socialism analogy is terrible and shoe horned into your argument in a way that illustrates nothing of value but instead creates a whole host of fallacies.

And I could teach courses on both capitalism and socialism so it is not for a lack of understanding that I found your analogies to be poor and unnecessary.

@jimmy-voorhees said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@reirdon there's tons of attention seeking shitposts too...like this one.

Lets take a new start at our relationship. I feel we got off on a bad foot.
I wrote a detailed opinion of how I think this game and the game industry at large is shifting in a way that may or may not be serving the player in the interest of ideology, then you, without any knowledge, attacked me on the basis of what you assumed my education was, and now are using dirty words.

I'll forgive you for that, but what would be helpful is if you suggest where, or how, or really at this point "If" you think I'm wrong and why.

I promise that I won't attack on the basis of my perception of your education and I will not swear.

So then, what do you find in my post that you disagree with?

@perfecshionist said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

The capitalism and socialism analogy is terrible and shoe horned into your argument in a way that illustrates nothing of value but instead creates a whole host of fallacies.

And I could teach courses on both capitalism and socialism so it is not for a lack of understanding that I found your analogies to be poor and unnecessary.

Alright, go.

My post is intending to illustrate how a more collectivist ideology is creeping into the gaming industry, where did I go wrong.

@sorenthaz said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

But basically they wanted Sea of Thieves to be some magical pirate adventure where you can be chilling and having fun with other players in one moment and then having epic pirate battles the next. They seemed to believe that somehow player behavior would be better than what it is, PROBABLY because those of us in the Pioneer and Alpha tests weren't a bunch of barbaric cut-throats shutting down ideas left and right so Rare thought that the Pioneer/Alpha samples were

I think you may have just found the missing link.

@jimmy-voorhees

Ok, look at that, we are having a conversation.

I don;t think this is the 10,000th post examining whether collectivism is influencing game design. But I admit I might be wrong about that.

The game is only a month old, I am not really enjoying it, I stopped playing.

Not sure why you would assume this, but my goal is not to change the gaming industry. It would obviously not make sense to think that the forums of one game would be so much as noticed let alone considered.

I found this situation interesting. I enjoy games and think they are art.

I have been playing since my family got a Pong console and have seen a lot of changes in how games have been created, marketed and treated by the media.

It seems to me that there is a growing trend in games to make them more in line with a certain ideology. So I wrote a post to open a conversation about it.

I enjoy this. Some agree, some do not, but to me it is worth discussing.

It seems to be to you as well as you responded.

You're not going to change the gaming industry. I've worked in it. Trust me. Your opinion is bupkus.

It would probably surprise you that I also worked in the gaming industry, if you were old enough to game on the PS2, N64 or the original Xbox, even the SNES or Genesis you have probably played at least one of my games.

That is why I find this so interesting.

@reirdon
Well which games? Just curious. I have been gaming since the 2600 days

@nwo-azcrack said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@reirdon
Well which games? Just curious. I have been gaming since the 2600 days

I don't want to Dox myself but if you played wrestling on a Console in recent decades you know my work, did a lot of games on lots of platforms, and even arcade, but only really had hits on consoles in the early 3d console days. Well had one hit on SNES, lol

@jimmy-voorhees said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@reirdon said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@nwo-azcrack said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@reirdon
Well which games? Just curious. I have been gaming since the 2600 days

I don't want to Dox myself but if you played wrestling on a Console in recent decades you know my work, did a lot of games on lots of platforms, and even arcade, but only really had hits on consoles in the early 3d console days. Well had one hit on SNES, lol

Not the same industry anymore.lol

No it is not, it all changed when publisher started to go public. Used to be you could get 4-5 guys, make SNES game, or even a game gear game and everybody was thrilled to be making $$$ and doing something creative.

Then everybody went public and the days of the wild west were gone.

Some companies wanted to see your financials, make you open your books to get a deal.

Then PS2 came and you needed 20+ guys and a million and half $$$.

But I digress, back to why I am a capitalist nutjob.

Nah it doesnt really interest me. Just tired of whiney creep on gaming forums.

Yeah, I do that a lot too, spend a lot of time interacting with things and people who don't interest me. I know how you feel.

@reirdon

“If you create a system, any system, in a game or real life, where nobody ever has any responsibility, there is no way to get ahead, where you never have to work and nothing has any value... and then give everybody guns, what do you think will happen.”

DId SoMEoNe SaY GUn COnTrOl?!?!?!?!

@fluffytree92879 said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

@reirdon

“If you create a system, any system, in a game or real life, where nobody ever has any responsibility, there is no way to get ahead, where you never have to work and nothing has any value... and then give everybody guns, what do you think will happen.”

DId SoMEoNe SaY GUn COnTrOl?!?!?!?!

Not sure what you are saying here?

@reirdon said in The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism:

The Problem With SoT Is Socialism... Or Capitalism

There seems to be two kinds of Players in Sea of Thieves. One that wants a more familiar experience incorporating what they have enjoyed in the past, and one that wants something much different than that. An experience that is less competitive and elitist, more social and friendly.

Both are fine philosophies for game design but Rare, whether by intention to subliminally teach us all the evils of elitism, or by accidental expression of the ideology of the design team, rolled the bones on the less elitist model.

Let's take a look at this through a different lens.

If Sea of Thieves were a country, it would have universal basic income, you would not have to work, because there is little to no reason to work. Nobody would be disadvantaged, or ever be able to acquire more than anyone else because in “Theivesistan”, nobody needs anything more. You have everything you need provided for free.

For some players this is Nirvana. The perfect gaming Utopia.

In their idealized version, removing the means of elitism would extinguish the elitist tendency in players. Change the constraints of the environment and you will change behavior. Once players get a taste of this “Games as a social portal experience” scenario, they will all see how much better it is to cooperate than to compete and consume. They thought the world was screaming for this experience.

To be fair, a significant minority do enjoy the “idea” presented by that philosophy.

But as happens in most economic systems, these egalitarian mechanisms lead to the same problems we see in sea of thieves.

What we see, funny as it may be, is stores with pitifully limited selections of goods, insanely inflationary pricing and the hordes of hopeful idealists begging for a momentary respite from gangs of ruthless, nihilistic criminals with nothing to do but revel in others suffering and aggravation.

Does that sound about right so far?

All we need is for one of us to rise up as a charismatic dictator, promising to restore law and order and hire all the griefers as a secret police force.

A large majority of people are complaining that people are “Carebears”, that there is nothing to do or reason to do it. At the same time a, not inconsequential, minority are complaining that they can not wander and explore freely because the world is too violent.

Both sides are right and have valid views.
The core here problem is that nothing in the game has value.

As every politician says in an election year:

WHAT THIS COMMUNITY NEEDS IS JOBS JOBS JOBS!!!

Here is what I mean.

If you had progression, by gear for instance, then even the most obnoxious greifer HAS TO WORK, to get the bigger better whatever to make him the bigger better jerk. While this may seem like a way to simply empower a tyrant, it actually has an equalizing and calming effect.

If the griefer has to level up, then his loot has true VALUE, even and especially to him. He must now gather resources, he must now travel with those resources and must now assess the risks to those resources. He is much less likely to engage in truly pointless combat if he truly needs what he has on his boat, and if he must have things on his boat to get the bigger better whatever.

The sheer fact that by making them work to get resources, to gear up, when they are farming those resources, they are doing something other than terrorizing people.

Not necessarily so. They only need to mimic looter behaviour to become accepted. If we cannot differentiate a looter from a griefer, no one cares which one it is. Currently we can and that's the issue.

The items do need to further embrace tactical values thorough situational dependencies.

The reward system is far too tedious, offers nothing tangible in play experience or development and consequently is of little interest to many players so they decide not to bother. They set to the sea in a boat filled with nothing but cannonballs, with nothing to gain or lose, not to quest or explore but entertain themselves in the way they know best, competing with other players.

They just want a reward and the only satisfying reward in this game is beating somebody. In most cases they do not even take the loot as a last dig on the defeated.

It all comes to PvP in any case no matter what the PvE side offers. Every single game that has a PvP feature in it is destined to have the endgame located there, by the players, unless devs that are responsible tweak the balance so extremely into the PvE direction that many seemingly lose interest to PvP (e.g. Diablo 3; Brawling).

Any reward system that bloats the game is tedious instead of challenging. They are not more than simple number games with or without a bottleneck effect. Any misused feature that involves grind, pseudo-randomness variables and the like bloats any game they are introduced into.

What Rare tried to do here, I think, is cash in on the popularity of the Fortnight/PuBg experience, but somehow bring a kinder, more egalitarian/socialist experience to it. The two do not mix. Just look at this forum if you do not believe me.

They do mix well here though. I don't know exactly how PuBG and Fortnite work, but in this game the main progression is not linked with PvP so technically the thieving part is purely an option; ironically the name is Sea of Thieves which implies an interesting conundrum, LOL. Sadly the game just doesn't offer anything to work with when it comes to leverage so it's almost impossible to bargain with any practical enough pragmatics and the like when they focus on PvP. There are literally no features that allow us to do this unless they themselves allow us to do so.

As is always the case, when you try to please everybody, you fail everybody. They could have made a competitive, sea battle game with rapidly quing sessions like FPS games. They could have made a happy fun party game with silly social mini games.

Not necessarily so. I am not convinced that pleasing everybody is an automatic failure. Deciding to not even try is. The case here merely shows that the devs are still searching the proper pace for every fantasy to take place in the game. Game currently is way too short and slim to be taken seriously that way. The core progression system offered here bloats the game beyond all reason which in turn makes the content feel empty eventually and guarantees imbalance.

What they did was try to do was somehow educate us that elitism and selfishness is bad, cooperating and working together is good and nobody should ever be better than anyone else IN A GAME ABOUT PIRATES!

Tumours are not bad essentially. What they may affect in some stages is the issue, when they are allowed to further form without proper observation and care. They are part of us in many ways, but just like any huge enough elephant let loose in a shop selling porcelain or other fragile enough products, letting some tumours get bigger than necessary is usually a bad idea, with the assumption that we wish to continue to live that is.

If you create a system, any system, in a game or real life, where nobody ever has any responsibility, there is no way to get ahead, where you never have to work and nothing has any value... and then give everybody guns, what do you think will happen.

Guns have value like some other things in the game so technically we haven't experienced a total lack of value here. Every player also brings some of their experiences with them, from our level of existence, into the game and express them in such ways the game allows us to perform. Since the tool pool in the game is much more limited in comparison to our actual experience pools, we need to get creative like we did in Journey made by ThatGameCompany. That game just didn't have any PvP features in place. It also has very simplified vocal and gesture base for communication, but excels at giving a great collective experience due all features in place.

By making the game so socialist in nature, by removing progression in the interest of inclusiveness (not strategic balance), you create chaos because in a world where nothing has value, it is difficult to maintain moral values.

Socialism also vanishes when value context is removed from play since it is formed after value as a concept was defined. Like I mention below, only those contexts are affected that are formed thorough a context or have enough influence over some contexts, but only up to their point of influence. Anything else stays unaffected. Moral values are also affected by the loss of value context, but only when intelligent enough entities are involved.

Players who are internally more Capitalistic and want to acquire and progress are not happy. Players who are more Socialist and want to interact and socialize are not happy. They lose on both fronts. Neither side is right, neither side is wrong, but neither side is satisfied.

Socialising is also a form of progress and capitalism relies heavily on that part. You can't gain an edge over others if you don't know how to communicate with others let alone talk about working as a team to roll your goods to anyone.

There has to be some notion of value, even in games like WOW, even on brutal PvP servers, players have things they need to do to be successful and will not often distract themselves to immediately attack anything that moves. Above that there is social value created the Horde and Alliance factions. If you get caught alone in Swamp of Sorrows by 4 Horde players, and 4 Alliance player see it, they come to your aid. They find value in the very loose social construction and want to protect it.

This is why the current progression system in place has to go. One that truly values every player gives at least something for each of us. Not all of us want the exact same things so it is futile to even try. Key is in the momentum; it's about when over what. Why, how, who, where, when and what.

Sea of thieves presents itself like Mark Zuckerberg in a senate hearing, “We want to find new ways to bring people together”. They wanted to eliminate elitism. But eliminating progression also eliminates purpose. Where there is no purpose there is no consequence. Where there is no consequence there is no order.

Actually elitism can be eradicated. It is not progression, but a part of it. It's more like a tumour in some cases, if it cannot become self-aware and regulate itself in time. Question is when, not if. Progression itself cannot be eliminated and therefore lack of progress isn't what is offered here. Issue is the form of progress present in the game and what players define for themselves thorough the means in the game.

There are still consequences in play even if we remove the context of purpose from play. Purpose and order are human discovered mental traits formed thorough evolution. They are concepts that only affect those things they have helped to form after them. Since the consequence context has formed before purpose, lack of purpose doesn't affect any other consequence than just those that are formed thorough purpose. Every intelligent enough entity shares these traits, even though they may differ from one another. Hence technically if you remove humans from play, for example, anything humans have helped to form and have enough influence over is affected while others are not. The domino effect of consequences still roll either until the death of all existence or up to a point of influence.

This is the very mechanic that drives successful games like PuBG and Overwatch, so that idea is not wrong, but it is honest and obvious in those titles.

PuBG feels somewhat as boring as Fortnite, but Overwatch is cool.

What they have accomplished by trying to create a fun sandbox that “Finds new ways to bring player together” is creating a nihilistic killing field that fails to please most gamers.

Which just means that they haven't really added all the ingredients into the game so that every fantasy has a chance to shine every now and then.

Progression does not lessen the experience for the social player. If I am wrong, then by eliminating it in this game there should be nobody complaining about griefing. It simply can’t be happening, nobody has a better or more powerful anything. If bigger, better more powerful items is the root and empowering causation of griefing, then shouldn’t it be “Problem Solved” in Sea of Thieves?

There's always some kind of progression involved when it comes to existence. Purposes only exist to intelligent enough entities. Issue in this game is that griefing does not follow the exact path of a looter which means that it is easily identified. What I mean by this is that the unwanted behaviour is not forced to assimilate a tolerable pattern. Same error in Pokémon GO when it comes to spoofers. Solution is to identify what griefing is and then forcing griefers to adapt such behaviour pattern that is acceptable.

What progression does is it gives aggressive players purpose, and if people have a purpose they focus on it. If an aggressive player has no purpose, they act like an Ah*.

One requires a purpose to be an a****e.

So chalk this up to an experiment that failed.

((Puts on Fireproof suit, tosses match over his shoulder and walks towards the camera in slow motion))

Ongoing failed experiment until updated to succeed.

@reirdon "The sheer fact that by making them work to get resources, to gear up, when they are farming those resources, they are doing something other than terrorizing people."

Well, someone doesn't play MMORPG's... Ever played on a PvP WoW server before?

Yeah what you are suggesting makes the situation worse in the long run... What we need is for people to understand that although SoT is a PvPvE game, the main aspect of the game is PvP, it's a pirate game, where player are the pirates...

So this "griefer" isn't actually a griefer at all, he repesents the several people who are the constant threat to your treasure... The entire premise of the game is based on this, piracy, pirates.

There's nothing else to say, if you view it as griefing... You are under the wrong impression that SoT is somehow a PvE game, lol.

"What they did was try to do was somehow educate us that elitism and selfishness is bad, cooperating and working together is good and nobody should ever be better than anyone else IN A GAME ABOUT PIRATES!"

Yeah rare seemed a bit gullible regarding the whole friendliness speech in several of their videos, l**o.

"by removing progression"

Cosmetic progression is still progression, and players are always interested in prestige, Pirate legend happens to fit that criteria... Same way getting to top 500 in Overwatch is entirely cosmetic, but it's prestige and bragging rights etc... People enjoy that.

Even the PvE "carebears" community is interested in pirate legend, though they just want to have it handed to them for free on a silver platter by being protected from the PvP aspect of this PvPvE game.

That's like going on world of warcraft and saying "i want that legendary weapon, but i don't want to have to deal with farming for it... pls gief legendary weapon blizz!".

If you want something, you gotta work for it... But there are the occasional people who aren't interested in the prestige and just want to PvP, that's fine, it's a sandbox game too, you can do that if you want!

"Players who are internally more Capitalistic and want to acquire and progress are not happy. Players who are more Socialist and want to interact and socialize are not happy."

Based on what statistical information? As far as i can tell ,there's just a small yet very vocal minority of PvE "carebears" that want to have everything handed to them without having to deal with the challenge of getting it. I'm a PvE player, myself, i'm just not a carebear. :P

I'm happy with the game as a whole, just a bit dissatisfied with merchant alliance, ugh those voyages are pure torture for me. ;_; That's my only problem though.

"They lose on both fronts."

Imagine rare target consumers is a scale...

|------------|---------------------------------------------------------------|------------|

(Hardcore PVP) (PvPvE Majority) (PvE Carebears)

The majority is relatively happy with the game, of course looking forward to future content updates, it's just the extreme ends of the scale/spectrum or whatever that aren't happy.

"Neither side is right, neither side is wrong, but neither side is satisfied."

The extreme sides are wrong, and only the middle majority is right, actually... The game was designed for the PvPvE symbiosis... Neither works without the other...

It's not Rares job to satisfy the extremists.

"There has to be some notion of value, even in games like WOW"

PRESTIGE! Universal value in all games!

"But eliminating progression also eliminates purpose."

sigh

Prestige.

"Where there is no consequence there is no order."

That's true, lucky for us they did a thing with ship respawn recently. Forums are always open for more suggestions though. However, given the examples in question, there's no punishment for spawn-camping lowbies, and at worst, the lowbies just have to pay a repair bill, which costs so little it's not relevant as a punshment.

And, in wow, you don't really get any particular reward for helping fellow players fight horde, not in open world anyway... You get 1 honor per kill, and that used to be a currency where you could buy gear, but you needed well over 700 honor to buy the cheapest gear piece. xD

Nowadays the honor system has been converted into experience points for PvP levels... You still only get like 5-10 honor per kill, and you need like several thousand or more to level up, increasing with each level. So, basically, still no reward for killing hordies.

So sadly, WoW is a bad example to use to further your argument. WoW is separated into factions, Horde and Alliance, they can't attack their own faction, so they are forced to team up with their fellow faction member against the enemy faction... However faction on faction PvP/conflict, is just as brutal, aggressive and unforgiving as ANY PvP game. :P

"What they have accomplished by trying to create a fun sandbox that “Finds new ways to bring player together” is creating a nihilistic killing field that fails to please most gamers."

I think you'll find the majority has been reasonably pleased. xD

"Progression does not lessen the experience for the social player."

You don't get to cherry pick what kind of progression counts as progression or not... Cosmetic progression is still progression.

"If bigger, better more powerful items is the root and empowering causation of griefing, then shouldn’t it be “Problem Solved” in Sea of Thieves?"

There is no such upgrade progression in SoT... Only cosmetics... To be fair, i have no idea whether you are arguing for or against progression anymore, you've started to ramble like a madman.

"What progression does is it gives aggressive players purpose, and if people have a purpose they focus on it. If an aggressive player has no purpose, they act like an Ah*."

Very short-sighted solution, and ultimately makes things worse in the long run... It would turn SoT into what WoW PvP servers are currently, max level people running around low level zones and spawn-camping them until they quit the game. Only in this case, the low level is actually helpless to escape the spawn-camper. People like that do what they do because they find it fun, humans aren't dogs, you can't just redirect their energy to something productive to solve the problem... These are sentient, intelligent, human being with all kinds of personality traits you are helpless to control, so stop trying to control them. :P

With SoT's current system these people aren't given the opportunity to get an advantage over their victims, their victims have a fair chance to fight back... It is as it should be.